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Monday, August 17, 2009

We Can Hitch A Ride To Rockaway Beach

Friday night, I'm getting on a bus and heading up to NYC. "Sightseeing?" you ask. "No," I reply. "Bar crawling again?" "Been there, done that." I say. "Taking in some culture and good restaurants?" Sounds nice, but no. (And stop giving me the third degree. Sheesh...)

I'm going to New York to learn to surf. You read that right. I spent 15 of my formative years in Virginia Beach, Virginia, where there was both ample coastline and opportunity to learn, yet I never once gave it a go. (This, of course, did not prevent me from wearing t-shirts from every surf shop at the oceanfront and peppering my tweener conversations with words like "tubular" and "stoked.") (I'm nothing if not a dedicated poseur.)

As I head out to a Long Island beach on Saturday morning, I will try to forget that a 24-foot-long shark washed up on the shore there not even a month ago. People I have mentioned this to inevitably try to reassure me about my safety, claiming that this was a plankton-eating shark and that there is really nothing to worry about. Nothing except a TWENTY-FOUR-FOOT-LONG SHARK, FOR CHRISSAKES!!!

We're gonna need a bigger boat,Brutalism

UPDATE: Thanks to Hurricane Bill, the surf instructor cancelled classes this weekend, so there will be no surf lesson for me. I am going to go home, put on my (new, bought just for this occasion) board shorts, clutch my bus ticket and play some Chris Isaak while staring forlornly into space.

P.S. Tante, Sister Wife Amy's biggest fear is being eaten by a shark. I would bet you a million caffeine-free beverages (caffeinated beverages are the devil's nectar) that Amy would not go anywhere near a surfing lesson.

"A study published in 2009, in which 25 basking sharks were tagged off the coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts..." Holy crap! It is just like "Jaws." They're everywhere!

Except that you are a total wuss. Basking sharks don't even have teeth (in addition to the fact that they eat plankton, MICROSCOPIC plankton). Dolphins have teeth. Are you afraid of them? You have more to fear from some toothless old grandpa sitting on a park bench on the boardwalk. A basking shark won't ogle you.

Surfing in Australia is suicide, though. Something like 900 Australians are eaten every year by nurse sharks alone. I think they stopped counting deaths from great whites.

I hope this goes better than your turn on the Segway! And have you seen how large a basking sharks mouth is?? May not have teeth, but it still has a stomach. And I agree with dilettante07--cheater, cheater...

Your class was canceled not because the waves will be big or the hurricane will hit NY. The pressure hurricanes generate on the ocean tends to push larger sea life normally residing in warmer waters along their path of travel. This inconvenience, coupled with the dearth of food sources in the new, colder waters, results in highly aggressive animals.

If Bill comes anywhere near the east coast, mark my words: the south coast of Long Island will be strewn with the unidentifiable, half-eaten corpses of the phony tough and the crazy brave.

Well Jason, I never claimed to be a real poseur. I think OP was all that made it to NH in the '80s. And not to the Marshall's (until the '90s, and by then I was way past wanting anything OP). So the only thing I ever got was a hoodie that my mother clearly got at a steep discount from one of downtown Exeter's finer boutiques.

Well I should amend that. There were some surf shops in the nearby towns that are on the ocean. Nothing there I could afford on a McDonald's salary.

Excerpt: "In Montauk, N.Y., swimmers weren't allowed in the water, but surfers were out riding the waves. State parks spokesman George Gorman said almost 2,000 surfers showed up at Montauk on Sunday, the most ever counted there. They enjoyed waves that reached as high as 16 feet."

Seriously, though. It's one thing to be Mr. I Ain't Afraid City Slicker. But don't do take on that persona with your 7-year-old.

And Tante -- I will totally take a pic of me in the board shorts...Mer wanted one, too. Is it even more enticing if I mention they are leopard print because I let Avery pick them out for me? Not even kidding.

And Tard - She was already thinking she was lucky when she was reminded of your lucrative career at McDonald's.